It was an even more successful year for Mets pitching development in 2025, with continued growth from 2024 breakouts and additional prospects making a name for themselves. This is really a two horse race,
but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate any of the other big performances from the arms on the farm.
RHP Nolan McLean
How acquired:
2023 Draft, Round 3, Pick 21 – $747,600 signing bonus
College – Oklahoma State
2025 Stats
MiLB: 8-5 w/ 2.45 ERA, 27.2% K%, 10.7% BB% in 113.2 IP / 21 G
MLB: 5-1 w/ 2.06 ERA, 30.3% K%, 8.5% BB% in 48.0 IP / 8 G
Even among pitchers – where you sort of expect more unheralded breakouts – Nolan McLean’s improvement over the past two seasons is remarkable. He’s gone from a two-way player in college who hit more than he pitched to one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. This past year, after looking like a solid pitching prospect in 2024, McLean came out and destroyed Double-A and Triple-A before functioning as the best arm in the major league rotation down the stretch.
Making it even better, McLean was not actually particularly good at Triple-A until only a few weeks before his debut. He’s continually messed with his pitch mix in search of the best way to leverage his high-level feel for spin while overcoming his poor fastball shape. Needless to say, he figured it out, settling on the latest version of slider and cutter. Calling him a prospect at this point is of course a bit odd given the major league success, but given that he’s technically under the IP threshold, he should be widely regarded as the best pitching prospect in baseball and one of the favorites for 2026 ROTY.
But does that mean he was the best minor league pitcher of the year? Maybe not…
RHP Jonah Tong
How acquired:
2022 Draft, Round 7, Pick 13 – $226,000 signing bonus
High School – Georgia Premier Academy
2025 Stats
MiLB: 10-5 w/ 1.42 ERA, 40.5% K%, 10.6% BB% in 113.2 IP / 22 G
MLB: 2 -3 w/ 7.71 ERA, 25.3% K%, 10.3% BB% in 18.2 IP / 5 G
…because Jonah Tong exists. There’s a running joke among many folks who discuss baseball that despite the fact that we’ve come up with 10s or even 100s of ERA estimators at this point, K-BB% still drives the majority of the signal. Well, Tong posted an absolutely silly 29.9% K-BB% in the minors this past season while posting an ERA under 1.50 as a 22-year-old in the high minors. Fittingly, he was named 2025 minor league pitcher of the year by Baseball America. Not just for the Mets, to be clear, for all of baseball.
Now, the major league performance was obviously a bit disappointing. Two bad starts ballooned Tong’s ERA, and he wasn’t particularly efficient in his other outings either. He probably needs a third pitch of some kind to complement the fastball / Vulcan change he currently features. I’m confident he’ll get there, particularly given the proficiency the Mets have demonstrated in this department, but McLean is the superior arm at this point.
What does that mean for this award? That’s up for you to decide.
RHP Jack Wenninger
How acquired:
2023 Draft, Round 6, Pick 19 – $225,000 signing bonus
College – Illinois
2025 Stats
12-6 w/ 2.92 ERA, 26.4% K%, 7.6% in 135.2 IP / 26 G
A 6th round, under-slot pick out of a non-SEC school turning into anything is a huge win. Turning into a potentially viable major league starter in the upper minors is a coupe. Wenninger stepped forward in a huge way and dominated at Double-A, leaning on his fastball and split change. In a weird way, it’s a similar arsenal to Jonah Tong minus the mechanical weirdness (which is a key part of the profile, to be fair). Wenninger is nowhere near that caliber of player, but he’s got a real chance to be an actually useful piece in a major league rotation at some point here.
After spending the past year at Double-A from start to finish, Wenninger will likely begin 2026 at Triple-A as something like the 9th or 10th starter on the depth chart. The inevitable injuries a pitching staff experiences may very well give him a chance to make his debut at some point.
RHP Ryan Lambert
How acquired:
2024 Draft, Round 8, Pick 8 – $172,500 signing bonus
College – Oklahoma
2025 Stats
2-1 w/ 7 saves and 1.62 ERA, 39.5% K%, 13.2% BB% in 50.0 IP
This could’ve been Dylan Ross who also had a breakout season and reached the majors, but I went with Lambert who had slightly better stats. An 8th round pick in 2024, Lambert made a mockery of Brooklyn to start the year before moving up to Binghamton and doing more of the same. Simply put, his rising fastball was too much for hitters in the low minors to handle, and that’s how he ran a negative FIP for the first eight innings of his season. At Double-A, his low Zone% become slightly more problematic, with the walk rate ballooning to a 5.57 BB/9. That’s only so much of a problem when you’re not giving up any damn hits though, and Lambert’s ERA remained sub-2 despite the extra free passes.
Relief prospects are infamously fickle, and it’s no sure thing that Lambert’s control problems won’t prove fatal or that his stuff will work in Triple-A or the majors. At present, however, he projects to be a valuable and potentially exciting depth piece for the 2026 bullpen, with a real chance to develop into a late inning weapon.
